Sea levels continued to rise, and a 40-yard-wide asteroid just missed the earth. The Mediterranean Sea was plagued by blobs. Pope Benedict XVI visited Africa; in Angola he warned against witchcraft, corruption, and condoms. Papal archaeologists in Rome authenticated the bones of Saint Paul the Apostle, and Jesus Christ was dismissed from jury duty in Alabama. Toxic-mining wastes in Idaho were killing tundra swans; a man in Munich received a two-year suspended sentence for beating another man with a swan. Highly aggressive supersquirrels were menacing gray squirrels in England, where the Law Lords were replaced with a new Supreme Court whose justices wear no wigs, and where cosmetic nipple surgery was increasingly popular. A London taxi driver tied one end of a rope around a post and the other around his neck and drove away, launching his head from the car. Anglican hymns were sung at Darwin’s tomb. Two Yellowstone National Park workers were fired for peeing into Old Faithful. Sarah Palin published a book, and Sylvia Plath’s son hanged himself in Alaska.

APP"Must we b sbjct to yt another abrv? Why does the English language have to fit on a two-inch screen? I hate the sound of it. I think I'll listen to a symph on the rad." -- Edward R. Bolt, Grand Rapids, Mich.

After Dark maps obscure public spaces downtown that are known to be havens for sexual and promiscuous gestures. The artist Terence Koh claims to have personally tested each of these sites in researching this map.Get Lost: Terence Koh

Meir Javedanfar, writing days later in The Guardian, asserted that Persian Jews referred to their shawls by the Hebrew word tzitzit; that Sabourjian was not a Jewish surname; that Ahmadinejad’s father was an observant Shia Muslim who once worked as a teacher of Koran; and that his mother was a Seyyede, one of a priestly caste descended directly from the Prophet Muhammad. Apparently, the family only changed their name to advance their class: Who wants to be “Mr. Weaver-and-dyer-of-carpets”—“painted thread” being the more accurate translation of sabour—when you could be called the scion of Ahmad, one of the many names of the polyonymous Prophet (also, Ahmad was the name of Ahmadinejad’s father).All of which is a terrible shame...

This Sunday, 160 years almost to the day since his sorry passing, Poe will finally be given the send off that his multitude of fans passionately believe he deserved. At 11.30am, a life-size recreation of his body will be carried in a horse-drawn carriage from his Baltimore home in Amity Street, to the Westminster Burying Ground where not one, but two full-length ceremonies will be held in front of up to 700 admirers, some of whom will have travelled from as far away as Vietnam.

DIDIONI wrote stories from the time I was a little girl, but I didn’t want to be a writer. I wanted to be an actress. I didn’t realize then that it’s the same impulse. It’s make-believe. It’s performance. The only difference being that a writer can do it all alone. I was struck a few years ago when a friend of ours—an actress—was having dinner here with us and a couple of other writers. It suddenly occurred to me that she was the only person in the room who couldn’t plan what she was going to do. She had to wait for someone to ask her, which is a strange way to live.